NormaJean is 43

6 of October in the year 2009

Tuesday

Saturday night was NormaJean’s birthday. NormaJean and I have been friends since the 9th grade when she had boobs and I did not. We are 3 months apart in age and come January, I will be 43.

Friday night, at 11:59 pm, NormaJean called and woke me from a Cape Cod Coma and with something like a puff of breath she announced: “It’s my birthday—I just turned 43.”

“You did? Oh, sweetie, that’s awesome—umm, any plans?” I asked.

“I’m Grandma-sitting for the next eight days but you go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

And, I did.

Saturday morning arrived and after a breakfast of champions (for recipe, see Saturday morning, 3 of October post) I called NormaJean and said I would be throwing a birthday party for two; I had props, costumes and an ACTIVITY. Yay!! Yay!!! I would arrive after she tucked Grandma into bed and all I asked is that she provide the Martinis in pretty glasses with pretty pics.

And, she did.

I showed up at her mom’s door with aprons (circa 1956) and a pair of peep toe heels for each of us to wear and a box of tomatoes. I tied aprons on each of us and had her slip on the shoes (I was already wearing my heels). I ran out to the car for the box of tomatoes which I held out to her and said: Let’s drink and can tomatoes!

And, we did.

We canned tomatoes, drank and laughed until two-thirty in the morning when we tried to watch a movie on her mom’s TV but neither of us understood the remotes. (In our defense, there were five remotes with some three hundred buttons collectively.)

 

Grandma did not get up until eleven in the morning. I told NormaJean everyone has one Grandma who typically spoils the grandchildren and I thought it was this Grandma that was sleeping upstairs allowing us to nurse our hangover with dignity.

Sunday morning, after crawling out of the bottle of vodka we fell into the night before, we counted 9 quarts of tomatoes—nine beautiful quarts of tomatoes canned in four and a half hours.

Other interesting Sunday morning data: two tablets of Excedrin, 500 mg each; four mugs of coffee with Baileys, we each drank two; a red beer with fresh lime for each (lunch); and the 1940 Hitchcock movie, Rebecca, which we watched twice. (I think.)

T and R: Truths and Realities

2 of October in the year 2009
Friday

I knew this would happen.

As soon as I found a project I was bound to enjoy and perhaps, with which I might stick for a reasonable period of time, I’d get a job.

So I am now employed.

I had a job before I realized it. Like Pig-Pen of the Peanut’s cartoon gang, I seem to walk about in daze, unaware of the cloud following me around.  Mine is cloud of fog and haze and his is a cloud of dirt and dust. I was at my desk using a pic to stab at a Queen Anne olive when the phone rang and the next thing I knew, I was ten minutes into an interview agreeing to come in for a second interview—which I did—and there I was signing sixteen documents giving the company permission to look into my past with a Dobsonian telescope.

I now have an official badge—an identification badge—and a 3-ring binder the size of the family bible and a headache the size of a small country.

Three weeks of training, 8:30-4:30, M-F.

Part of me is so, so sad.

The third day of training, between PowerPoint presentations, I listed the losses I would mourn:

What I will mourn

Two loads of laundry a day (to stay on top of it)…
Picking up kids in the afternoon—chocolate pudding for snack…
Baked salmon with a confetti sauce, new red potatoes and asparagus with hollandaise sauce made from scratch, and a loaf of homemade peasant bread…
Driving a 15 year-old to tennis lessons…
Cleaning the house at a leisurely pace…
45 minute bike ride…
Friday morning Bloody Mary’s and 2:00 pm vodka martinis…

Que en paz descanses, my life as I know it.

I looked over the list Saturday morning and as if I was afflicted with a special Tourette’s-like syndrome affecting consciousness rather than motor activity, I had a moment of clarity which brought me to a screeching halt and caused me shout out: THE THINGS I MOURN? Really?!!

Friday morning Bloody Mary’s and 2:00 PM vodka martinis?  
I ran out of vodka two days before I started training which meant that coming Friday, I would not have had a “Friday morning Bloody Mary,” because I had neither the vodka nor the MONEY to buy some.

The things I mourn? Really?!!

The Truths and Realities are as such:

I haven’t been able to “keep up” on the laundry for two weeks because I ran out of Tide and I don’t have the money to buy more;

I haven’t “cleaned the house at a ‘leisurely pace’ for four months because I’ve been too busy sitting in a rocker crying over my financial situation, using a t-shirt to blow my nose because I can’t afford to buy a box of Kleenex;

I haven’t driven a fifteen year old to tennis lessons in months because she doesn’t have tennis lessons because I cannot afford tennis lessons;

And, those vodka Martinis and Bloody Marys and Cape Cods of which I have grown so fond, dried up a week ago—because: I’m too poor to afford even the $7.98 bottle of Barton’s Vodka.

It may appear that recently and only recently, I’d been swimming in vodka. And, indeed I had. I stole (stole may be too harsh a word, more like took or helped myself to) a large and expensive bottle of vodka which THE ONE WHO MUST BE RESPECTED bought for me last April, before I fled his house with all my baggage and moved into my sister’s house. (I saw the bottle in the liquor cabinet when, while he was out of town, I let myself into his place to “borrow” some Tide laundry soap.)

If I’m going to mourn anything, it should be the following:

Unpaid bills; swollen, crying eyes; sleepless, anxiety-filled nights; cheap, cheap vodka; the marvelous humiliation of asking THE ONE WHO MUST BE RESPECTED for gas money to drive the fruit of his loins to flag football field located in BF Lancaster County, exactly eleven miles from the nearest ATM and or public library.

I am employed.  I thought I heard HR mention $15.85 an hour, health insurance, and a small allowance for car and phone. That is a really, really good thing.

Broke As Broke Is

28 of September in the year 2009
Monday

Recently, I ran into a high school acquaintance that provided the Cliff Notes edition of her life post Class of ’85, and she said, “Ralph and I have been married eighteen years. Can you believe that?” I looked around to make sure she directed the question at me and then I rearranged my face to match her expression of wonderment: “Really,” I said with saucer-size eyes, "that is AMAZING.”

And really, I was amazed.

This led me to think about what I have done for fifteen or eighteen years consecutively.

That is a tuff one.

I have no record of long-term job placement.  I collect voter registration cards (you get a new one each time you move) like some people collect business cards. Marriages have been relatively short-lived: in wedding anniversary gifts, the first marriage made it to cotton and the second to candy or iron, depending on the anniversary gift list you reference, and the third—hold on, I didn’t marry that one.

On the bright side, a glance at the inventory of my life shows I’ve had five fewer relationships than addresses. I am able to commit to a man longer than I am to a roof over my head.

For years I have marveled at the long term successes of other people; people like me, my age and with similar childhood experiences.

I frequently hear from the people I care about (sometimes) and whose opinion I value (most of the time) that I am unable to commit to things; I simply cannot finish anything; and, that perhaps I have issues with attention span.

Blah, blah, blah.

They might be right some of the time and I may have bought into that nonsense for years—that is until last week, when I ran into Muffy-who’s-been-married-to Ralph-for-eighteen-years, and the chance meeting made me really, really think about this: what have I done for fifteen or eighteen years without interruption?

Poverty.

I have remained chronically poor for twenty years and by all accounts I have maintained this state exceedingly well. I have been AMAZINGLY successful at it—twenty years!

And it is not as if I’ve been bi-polar about my poverty—because unlike my personality which waffles between charming and despotic, there are no peaks or valleys in the geography of my state of want. This topographical map contains a very long and level plain region two decades in the making. Because it’s not like at one time I owned a house or a car or stocks or a savings account and then lost them.

No peaks, no valleys—just a nice, steady, consistent poor.